Day 68
MacLaren's Bar
That night, the gang was reunited at the bar: Marshall, Robin, Ted, Barney, and Alyx together for the first time in an atmosphere that, although not full of happiness, was no longer one of uncomfortable or heavy silences. It was the closest thing to normalcy.
Although gathered, Ted and Robin were still in their love bubble, of course, more subdued as the initial excitement of new love subsided, but more comfortable with what they were building together. Barney was the center of the general conversation with his misadventures, this time an encounter with a woman from NASA who turned out to be a kindergarten teacher. Marshall drank his beer moderately, not as a focus to drown his sorrows but as a habit. And Alyx, sitting beside him, simply observed her friends without analyzing everything or monitoring Marshall's state, just watching them with tranquility and appreciation for sharing with them.
"A toast," said Ted, raising his beer mug. "To moving forward, by force but forward!"
"To force!" Barney chimed in. "And to NASA women who are actually kindergarten teachers—just white lies, guys, white lies!" They clinked glasses.
Marshall looked at Alyx beside him and offered a small nod. His way of saying, We did it, and We got through pancake day.
Alyx returned a slight smile, saying, Yes, we did.
At that moment, after the toast and their brief exchange, conversations and friendly laughter returned when a figure slowly appeared in the window that ran along the hallway toward the bar's entrance.
At first, it was just a faint shadow until Alyx focused on observing that figure that seemed so familiar. Her pulse spiked before her brain could determine who it was. When the outside light briefly illuminated it, she saw his face.
It was Lily.
She was thinner, her red hair in a more serious cut. She was wearing a jacket Alyx didn't recognize, and her expression was marked, a whirlwind of emotions Alyx couldn't distinguish from so far away.
But her eyes, large and luminous even from a distance, were fixed on them. On their group, scanning it, stopping only on Marshall, who was laughing at something Barney said, and then on Alyx, who was petrified with a frozen smile on her lips.
Alyx stopped hearing the bar's bustle, Barney and his stories—everything—while feeling the air escape her. She saw how Lily's eyes sought hers through the glass, and it was like a blow to the stomach. All the controlled pain, the imposed order, the slow reconstruction was completely shaken by that single glance, making the foundations she was barely rebuilding tremble.
Lily watched them. Her hand rose slightly as if to touch the glass or push the bar door open and enter. Her mouth moved to form an unintelligible word that never came out.
But in the end, she didn't enter.
Doubt crossed her face. She looked at Marshall, who remained unaware, happy for an instant in his bubble with his friends, and looked at Alyx, whose face was now a marble mask, all her muscles tense not to collapse. She looked only at that complete picture—that life continued spinning without her.
And then, as if an invisible force pulled her back, she took one step back, then another, and another, until her figure merged with the shadows of the night, and in an instant, just as she appeared, she disappeared from Alyx's sight.
Alyx let out a choked gasp that only Marshall, sitting nearby, heard. He turned his head, following her gaze fixed on the empty window.
"Alyx? What's wrong? Are you feeling okay?" he asked slightly concerned.
Alyx blinked once, twice, and forced herself to breathe. In her head, the image of Lily, so close and yet so far, burned in her retina. She thought, Should I tell him? Break this fragile peace that cost them so much to build? Bring back the ghost just when they were starting to bury it?
Her protective instinct, the same one that had made her care for Marshall all those days, rose with force. Telling him now would be like throwing a grenade in the middle of his slow recovery. It would completely destroy him again.
Another voice in her head told her that keeping that secret was betraying the truth. It was creating a new lie between them.
"Alyx?" Marshall's voice was full of genuine concern now. Ted, Barney, and Robin had stopped talking and were looking at them.
With a superhuman effort, Alyx looked away from the window and rested her gaze on Marshall, forcing a smile that made every muscle in her face ache.
"Sorry, it was a dizzy spell... from the heat, I think," her voice sounded strange and too loud. "What were you talking about?"
Marshall studied her for a second too long but let it pass as Barney, who resumed his story with the same enthusiasm, distracted him.
Alyx took her glass with a trembling hand and took a long drink. Her eyes occasionally returned to the window, as if expecting her to return and not be a mirage of a past that was alive, breathing, watching them, and returning.
The facts were: Lily had returned, she had seen them. And she had left.
That moment for Alyx was a clear reminder that this summer of broken hearts wasn't over; it was only the intermission. The real storm that would shake their lives had just arrived—one involving decisions, secrets, and emotional pain was already foretold.
And she, trapped between her love for Marshall and her love for Lily, would have to decide which side to be on when the storm finally broke.
Ted's Narration, 2030
"And so, kids, that summer finally began to close. Marshall became a functional person again. Alyx started looking for her own path.
And I was blindly happy with Robin. Your Uncle Marshall and Alyx thought they had made it, and we thought we had moved on. What we didn't know—what none of us knew at that moment—was that that night at the bar, while we toasted to moving forward, the past was watching us from the window, and with it, our future was going to be rewritten."